Consumer Decision-Making Styles and Local Brand Biasness: Exploration in the Czech Republic

Wanninayake W.M.C.Bandara

Abstract:
The modern marketer shows a growing interest in the research of consumer decision-making
styles to understand how an individual makes his/her buying decisions in the competitive environment.
This concept is important because it determines the behavioral patterns of consumers
and is relevant for market segmentation. Most of the previous researchers have adapted to Consumer
Style Inventory (CSI) introduced by Sproles and Kendall in 1986 as a common tool for
assessing the decision-making styles of customers. Though researchers have validated CSI in different
cultural and social contexts, very limited studies were carried out to explore the relationship
between consumer decision-making styles and their domestic brand biasness. Therefore,
the present study mainly focuses on exploring the impact of consumer decision-making styles
on their preference towards domestic brands in the context of the Czech Republic. The sample
for this study was drawn from adult customers who live in the Brno, Zlín, and Olomouc regions in
the Czech Republic. A group of students from the Bachelor’s degree programme in Management
and Economics, Tomas Bata University in Zlín were selected as enumerators for data collection.
Altogether 200 questionnaires were distributed and 123 completed questionnaires were taken
in for final analysis. The decision- making styles were measured using Sproles and Kendall’s
(1986) CSI instrument. Cronbach’s Alpha values of each construct confirmed that there is a good
interring reliability associated with the data. Principle Component Analysis was employed to determine
the decision-making styles of Czech customers and the one-way ANOVA was used for
testing hypotheses. The findings revealed that seven decision-making styles are appeared among
Czech customers and fashion consciousness, recreational orientation, impulsiveness, and price
consciousness of customers show a direct relationship with the domestic brand biasness. Other
styles did not show a significant relationship with domestic brand preferences in the given context.
Finally, the researchers provide some suggestions for domestic firms in the Czech Republic
to develop appropriate marketing strategies for attracting customers towards domestic brands.
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